I never thought I would be writing to you again, but for reasons which I will explain in due course Paula succeeded in persuading me to finish what we have started. She was both sad and hurt when I told her that your memory loss was a complete hoax, but when I returned to her room after going off to tell the other residents what you had done, something had dawned on her, as she put it, and she now wanted us to finish writing this memoir anyway. In fact, not only did she say she wanted us to finish it, she insisted that we do so. If I refused she would ask someone else to help her, she said, and if she couldn’t find someone else then she would do it herself, bad eyesight or no bad eyesight. It didn’t matter that you had deceived us and that you hadn’t lost your memory after all, because in all likelihood this had nothing to do with you writing a book about yourself, it had nothing to do with art and literature, she was sure, or not just that anyway.
When I asked her to be more specific she promptly proceeded to tell me about the time when Berit and Arvid were together and you and she moved into his house in Namsos – in the summer of 1982 this was. Arvid was a vicar in Namsos at the time and folk simply couldn’t believe that someone as ungodly as Berit could have married and moved in with him of all people. That she and Arvid were about as different as chalk and cheese didn’t make it any easier to understand. They lived and walked at different speeds, as Paula says. Berit was impetuous, dynamic and purposeful. She talked fast, she was quick and restless in her movements and as I’ve said she had this capricious temperament: her mood could swing from bright to black in the blink of an eye.
Arvid on the other hand was so stolid, so sedate in nature that Paula says it made her skin crawl just to be near him. I took him forever to do anything, he was fussy and pernickety and when telling a story he could never get to the point, but would simply ramble on with that dopey smile on his face. And sometimes when he walked, or even if he just shifted slightly, it looked as though he was moving in slow-motion. “That man gives me the creeps,” as Paula wrote in her diary on the twelfth of May 1982.
And yet, despite their differences, they were together. Or possibly precisely because of them, as many of the women in Paula’s and Berit’s sewing circle remarked. Dagny, for example, believed that Berit had picked Arvid because she had such a low boredom threshold and because everything about him, his manner and the life he led, was so very different from Berit’s own personality and lifestyle that to her it seemed new and exciting. Spontaneous and impulsive as she was, she therefore did exactly as his grandfather had once done: she cut all ties with her family and started a new life in a new place.
But most people believed that Berit had hooked up with Arvid because she saw marrying a vicar as a step up in the world. Being a man of the cloth didn’t have quite the prestige that it had once had, it’s true, but the local vicar still enjoyed a great deal of respect, much more than today and possibly even more among the farmers and fishermen on the island of Otterøya than in Namsos, where the vicar had to compete for respect and prestige with businessmen, politicians, doctors and all sorts of other individuals, including celebrities, as Paula says. Plus Arvid had “money in the bank” and that made him a much more interesting prospect than he would otherwise have been. “He spoils me rotten, and I love it,” your mother used to say to Paula.
Arvid, for his part, was intent on saving Berit from “that hole” as he once called the house on Otterøya. It was this – being allowed to play the prince who saves the princess from the dungeon – that caused him to throw himself into their relationship as wholeheartedly as he did, so Paula says, not without a trace of contempt. He rolled his eyes and shook his head at the tyres, spare parts and hulks of cars scattered around the yard at Erik’s place. He was sure that the walls of the house were permeated with the smell of boiled fish and he asked – in all innocence, seemingly, and with the best will in the world – if they ever ate anything but fish. The bathroom was riddled with damp and needed to be totally stripped and redone before they all succumbed to the effects of mould and mildew, he declared. The aspens up on the hillside would have to be felled before they were blown down in a storm and flattened the house while they were sleeping. The living room was so draughty that he caught cold if he spent any length of time in it. And he thought it was quite ridiculous that Berit had to cut the grass with an old-fashioned, mechanical lawnmower whenever Erik was away. He couldn’t bear to see her sweating and straining like that, he said, and he insisted on taking over the job of cutting the grass. But according to Paula he only ever did it the one time, because he got such an ache in the small of his back from the way he had to stoop to push the lawnmower that Berit had to take over again.
He made everything out to be worse than it actually was and of course he believed it was all Erik’s fault. If I understand Paula rightly, Erik was the troll in the fairytale that Arvid liked to think he was living in. Not only was he a lazy so-and-so who never reinsulated the house or renovated the bathroom or cleared up the yard, and not only was he too mean to buy a motor mower or a snow-blower or any other labour-saving equipment, the fact that he liked a drink and maybe a bit of a party at the weekend made him an alcoholic and unfit to look after his family. The fact that he was honest and straightforward and spoke his mind branded him as rude, crude and vulgar; and that he read your comic books, or the western ones at any rate, made him stupid and childish. Even when Erik made an effort to make Arvid feel welcome he couldn’t win. “I hope you don’t mind pork chops,” Erik said one time when Arvid came to dinner, thereby giving Arvid his cue to say that the pork chops were delicious. But he didn’t. “Oh, pork chops are all right,” was all he said, even though he must have known that pork chops were only ever a weekend treat in your house.
Obviously he behaved like this because he wanted to make his rescue of you seem as great a deed as possible. The blacker he painted Erik and your living conditions the more of a hero he would seem. And if I understand Paula correctly much the same thinking lay behind his virtual glorification of Berit’s mother. Not that Arvid had known her, of course – she had died back in the 60s when she got caught up in the tyre chains of a passing bus and dragged under it on her way home from the blueberry woods – but according to Paula he milked Berit’s stories about her for all they were worth. He pumped and grilled her for information and everything Berit told him about her mother made her seem wonderful in his eyes: according to him she was practically a saint, another Mother Teresa, just because she’d been in the habit of giving eggs and milk to a neighbouring family that had trouble making ends meet, “She must have been an extraordinarily good person,” he said. And when Berit informed him that most of the neighbours had done what they could to help this family, providing them with food and clothing from time to time, he didn’t even want to hear about it. All he said was, “I’m sure she was wonderful,” and nothing would change his mind, probably because he wanted to provide Berit with a mother whom he considered worth resembling and emulating. This – if I understand Paula rightly – was not only a cunning way of controlling and manipulating Berit, but also a ploy designed to make his rescue of her seem even more impressive. The more beautiful the princess, the more splendid the deed, as it were.
As you may have noticed and may also have found surprising, Paula is remarkably interested in the relationship between Berit and Arvid. This fascination is also evident from one of her diary entries from that time:
Otterøya, May 29th 1982
Berit and Arvid are getting married. All the blood seemed to drain from my head when she told me. I couldn’t even pretend to be happy for her although she tried to make me say I was. She sat there with her head covered in electric rollers, smiling and trying to look radiantly happy, but I didn’t feel like humouring her. I turned away and cried. I’m older and more experienced than her and I just know this will end in disaster, this is just another way of punishing herself, a way of making amends and winning the forgiveness and solace that she has so desperately been looking for. It’s awful, painful even, to watch. She’s already started dressing the way the women at the Salem Church do. She insists that David prays and sings before meals and yesterday she couldn’t come and meet me because she was going to church. She tries to act as though none of this is any big deal. As if it’s pure coincidence that she has suddenly started wearing the old gold cross her grandmother left her, and as if it was pure coincidence that she has all but stopped wearing make-up. It’s so obviously not a coincidence, and that in itself says a lot. The way she tries to convince me that it means nothing, that it is just coincidence, that’s simply her way of trying to ease the sadness she knows I’m feeling right now; her way of telling me that just because she’s starting a new life that doesn’t mean to say that we’re going to lose one another. But we will lose each other. Not only because she’ll be getting married soon and leaving here for good, but also because she’s already starting to cancel herself out, she’s already starting to disappear. This is just another way of taking one’s own life. Soon the Berit I know will no longer exist, soon she’ll be a fanatical Christian, I know she will, she has the temperament, the self-sacrificing nature and the strength necessary to reinvent herself; and, not least, she has an insatiable need for the solace and forgiveness that religion can offer. Because that is what drives her. Contrary to what many people think, she’s not marrying Arvid out of love for him, and she’s not becoming a Christian to please him. It’s the other way round: it’s religion she’s looking for, it’s God she’s looking for. Arvid is merely a guide in all of this, a guide to lead her into the Christian church.
So you see, Paula has a quite different explanation for why Berit married Arvid. According to what she writes in her diary Berit did it because she wanted to make amends and because she sought forgiveness and solace in religion. But it is only when she starts to write about why Berit sought forgiveness and solace that I begin to understand why Paula was so intrigued by this marriage and why she is so terribly keen for us to finish this letter. Because it appears that all of this has to do with you and your advertisement in the newspaper, David. You see, Paula maintains that Berit was driven to join the Church by exactly the same urge that drove you to place a notice in the newspaper and pretend that you had lost your memory. Or rather, she maintains that both these acts can be traced back to one particular incident.
Let me explain:
According to Paula, your advertisement is not part of an artistic project, or not primarily at any rate. First and foremost it is an attempt to find your real father, she says. You placed that advertisement in the paper hoping that your father would recognize you from your picture and get in touch with you. It seems pretty obvious and self-evident now, as I write this, but even though I knew that Berit had always refused to reveal who your father was, I have to admit that this thought had never even crossed my mind before Paula mentioned it. Let me just say, though, that as soon as she said it I began to take a more clement view of you and your actions. All of a sudden you were no longer a cold-hearted cynic, you were a man who longed to find your own father, your own roots, your own history. I can understand how you would be willing to go to extremes to achieve your goal, which is why I agreed to finish this letter.
But enough of that.
From a very early age you had, of course, wondered who your father was. You had asked Berit about him every now and again, but she had always palmed you off with some story or other, for the first years of your life at least. Your father was an Apache chief, she would tell you on one occasion; on another he might be a pirate and on yet another an astronaut, living on the moon. If you didn’t see through these lies yourself then naturally you realized that that’s what they were once you started talking to other children. But that was the whole point, of course, because Berit didn’t want you to grow up with the wrong idea of your father, she just wanted a little break from all your questions. As you got older though you were no longer content with such absurd answers. Your questioning of her became much more earnest and insistent. Sometimes you would act like a little adult, appealing to her common sense and telling her that you felt you had a right to know. Other times you would cry and beg. Or you would take a more cunning approach and bring up the subject when other people were present – presumably to show Berit that you would give her no peace until she told you. This last plan of attack could give rise to some painful scenes, however, so Paula says. Although I don’t remember this incident myself, she says that during one Christmas assembly at the school, in 1979 or 1980, one of the teachers had read from and spoken about St Luke’s Gospel. And when he got to the part about the virgin birth you turned to Berit and asked if that was how you had been born. Everyone there had burst out laughing, of course, but not Berit. She had flown into a rage and to the shock of teachers, parents and the other children she had given your face a resounding slap.
It was clear to everyone, including Berit that you desperately needed to know. But still your mother refused to tell you. Not even when it was pointed out to her that your anxiety disorder might be linked to you not knowing who your father was, did she show any sign of changing her mind. So why not? What was so terrible about your father that his identity could on no account be revealed to you?
When I asked Paula about this she really surprised me: it’s all her fault, she says. The day after you were born, she made a fatal mistake, a mistake which has certainly been made before by midwives and other hospital staff, although so seldom that most people associate it solely with American soap operas. What happened, quite simply, was that Paula got you and another baby mixed up. So you were put into Berit’s arms and your real mother was given Berit’s son. Naturally one has to ask how this could have been at all possible – that was certainly the first thing I asked. Surely the hospital had all sorts of safety procedures in place to prevent this sort of thing from ever happening? Oh yes, of course they had, Paula says, but due to a combination of chance and ill luck it did nonetheless happen. For one thing both births had been fairly unusual. Berit’s son was delivered by emergency caesarean so she had been anaesthetized and was therefore unconscious during the birth, and when you were born your mother was hit by a sudden fit of postnatal depression so bad that she would not even look at you to begin with. This meant that the next day neither woman was able to identify her own child – well, they had never laid eyes on them before. And for another, six babies had been born that night, an unusually large number for such a small hospital, and amid all the fuss and commotion Paula had forgotten to provide you and Berit’s baby with the obligatory wristbands giving the infant’s sex, blood type and mother’s name. And as if that weren’t enough, after helping to deliver so many babies Paula was exhausted. When she wheeled you and the other baby along to the postnatal ward the next morning she was dazed with tiredness and somewhat distracted – not only because of the two difficult births, but also because she was going through a tough time in her personal life and her mind was often elsewhere. And so, in an unfortunate momentary lapse of concentration, she managed to switch you and Berit’s baby.
But now comes the part that I simply cannot understand:
As part of the aforementioned safety procedures, attached to your cribs were labels giving exactly the same information as should have been given on your wristbands. No sooner had Paula handed over the two babies than she noticed that she had mixed up you and the other baby boy. So she realized that she had made a mistake. She saw it. With her own eyes. And she was just about to tell the mothers this, she says, when it occurred her that she couldn’t remember putting wristbands on the two of you, and when she checked and discovered that she had indeed made this fatal error she held her tongue. “I was already putting out my hands to take David back, but then Berit looked at me and smiled and I let her think that I was just stretching a bit because I was tired,” Paula says.
For a long while afterwards Paula tried to convince herself that she had done this because she was afraid she’d lose her job. You see the personal problems I mentioned had led her to make a number of mistakes before mixing you up with that other infant. In fact some of her colleagues had even hinted that her mind was never really on the job and that this inattentiveness had been partly to blame for complications during one birth in which a baby suffered brain damage due to lack of oxygen. This wasn’t true, of course, Paula says. Nevertheless, a close eye was being kept on her and she wasn’t trusted as she ought to have been, so from that point of view she had every reason to fear for her job. But this wasn’t why she didn’t tell your mothers that they had been given the wrong children. Nor was it because she was too embarrassed to admit her mistake. “The fact is that I wanted to do it,” she told me. “Something inside me wanted to switch those babies.”
And that is what I simply don’t understand. How Paula could have wanted to do it. That this nice, kind and always warm and friendly woman should have wanted to mix up two newborn infants, giving the children the wrong mothers and the mothers the wrong children, this is beyond my comprehension and, to be honest, David, I’m not altogether sure whether you should trust her, not on this point.
But she insists that it’s true, she takes full responsibility for what happened. To the question as to why she would do such a thing, all she says is that she doesn’t really know. She only knows that she couldn’t stop herself. As soon as she realized that no one would be any the wiser, something inside her drove her to do it. It was a terrible thing to do, she freely admits, a wicked thing. But she is also careful to point out that it was not planned, not in any way. A combination of accident and ill luck made it possible and for some reason she felt she had to fulfil this opportunity that had suddenly presented itself.
Later, although how much later she doesn’t know – possibly a day, possibly a week, possibly a month – the enormity of what she had done began to dawn on her, but by then there was no way she could have owned up to it. She wanted to get in touch with Berit and your real mother, she told me, she was racked with guilt and several times she tried to pluck up the courage to do so, but she couldn’t. And the longer she left it the more difficult it became, of course. She lived very close to you and Berit, of course, so she could see how well the two of you were getting on, how attached you had become to one another. Was she to destroy all that by telling the truth? Now, after such a long time? What consequences would that have – for you, for Berit and for Paula? What good could ever come of it? She knew nothing about the other family, but you and Berit were doing just fine as you were, you loved one another and the very thought of splitting you up was a crime, Paula says. So was it only to ease her own guilty conscience that she even considered telling the truth? Or was she driven by some sense of duty, some inner conviction that blood is thicker than water and that a child ought to be with its own natural parents no matter what? Every day for a little over two years Paula wrestled all alone with these questions, but contrary to what I would have thought she did not become more and more troubled and burdened by the thought of what she had done. Not at all, she says. Instead it had become more like a habit to think about it. And not only that, but since this was something known only to her it was also something that she found herself reflecting on when, for whatever reason, she wanted to be by herself. The knowledge of what had happened was something that belonged to her and her alone, she tells me, or rather – that was how she saw it, as a kind of room in which she could take refuge when things became too much for her, a room where no one could get at her.
But in spite of all this she did eventually tell Berit the whole story. Or no, not in spite of but possibly because of this, is what I think she was trying to say. Because the more she thought about, it the less and less disastrous her action seemed, and obviously this made it easier for her to explain what had happened. Moreover, she and Berit had already become friends and begun to confide in one another. Indeed it was partly because she had the urge to own up to what she had done that she had continually sought Berit’s company at the sewing circle evenings at Dagny’s house. At the time she couldn’t have said whether she did this deliberately, but now, looking back on it, she says, it’s clear to her that she gravitated towards Berit because she was anxious to know whether it would be at all possible to tell her what had happened, whether Berit would be able to cope with this information. And, as I wrote at the start of this letter, Paula had discovered that Berit had a kind of darkness inside her, a gaping void, and because of this Paula felt sure that Berit would also be able to understand the darkness in other people, and possibly even the darkness inside her, Paula.
But still, she hadn’t planned to say anything. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing, she says. They were on their way home one evening from a sewing circle meeting at Dagny’s and suddenly she just blurted out the truth to Berit. Or at least, not the whole truth, because she missed out the part about having stopped herself from correcting her mistake while there was still time. That was one thing she was never able to admit to Berit, not even after they had become the bosom friends that Paula claims they eventually became.
But if habit and the passage of time had distanced Paula from the seriousness of what she had done, it was brought back to her full force when she saw how Berit reacted to her confession. Because, of course, she went into a state of shock. Her own natural colour seemed to drain from her face and while Paula was overcome by the remorse and dread that she had until then more or less suppressed and sobbed and wept her way through all the details, Berit said not a word to what she was being told. Not then, nor in the days and weeks that followed. Later she told Paula that she had tried to block it out. Or, at least, not block it out, she had tried to convince herself that it wasn’t true. She tried to tell herself that Paula must be mistaken. Either that or she was mad and incapable of differentiating between fantasy and reality. Or maybe she was a psychopath, intent on controlling her in some way. Maybe she had made the whole thing up just so she could threaten to make it public if Berit didn’t do what she wanted – it was, after all, a secret that could have appalling consequences for you and Berit should it become known.
And so, by clinging to the shred of uncertainty attached to Paula’s revelation Berit managed to survive the first weeks and months. After a while she almost managed to convince herself that it was all a pack of lies, and so she did something that she would later come to regret often: she got in touch with a doctor she had become friends with while doing her nursing training in Namsos and got him to do a test – merely to confirm once and for all that you really were her son, she told herself. As an almost fully qualified nurse she took the blood samples herself, and when she went up to the hospital to deliver them to her doctor friend she told him it was a woman friend of hers who wanted to have this test carried out, she was just doing her a favour.
And you already know the result of that test, David. It was the exact opposite of what Berit had hoped for and believed.
It’s hard to imagine how hard it must have been for Berit after that, how it must have eaten away at her. By which I mean the sorrow over the realization that she had never known her own son and probably never would, the feeling of loss and the yearning for him, to never know how he was – all of this must have been nigh on unbearable. And according to Paula it was. Berit spent her whole life feeling that she had failed her own son. Not a day went by when she didn’t torture herself with the thought that he needed her and that she ought to be there for him. She would probably have done this anyway, but it didn’t help that she remembered with horror how your real mother had treated the child she had believed to be her own, but who was in fact Berit’s son. Not only had she screwed up her face and been reluctant to take the child Paula laid in her arms, and not only had she sat there with a cold and indifferent, not to say sulky, look on her face for the short time that she could be bothered to hold him, but when your real father came to see you both she had jerked her head in the direction of the little trolley with the baby’s crib on it and almost spat at him: “There, you see, that’s what comes of you never being able to control yourself.”
Berit never got over it. Even though Paula kept trying to reassure her by saying that your real mother’s behaviour must have been a result of the aforementioned postnatal depression, Berit could never shake off the idea that her real son had been brought up by a ghastly, tyrannical mother.
And this of course only made the feeling of having failed her own son even worse than it would otherwise have been. History repeats itself, as Berit used to say of this. By not going to see the other family and demanding to have her son returned to her, she was doing exactly the same to him as she felt her grandfather had done to Erik and hence also to her, Paula says. She deprived him of the chance of a good life. And what is more, the constant feeling of guilt, the deep sorrow and longing and, not least, the uncertainty and the attendant fear, this welter of painful emotions – this was what found outlet in the seething rages by which, as Paula mentioned earlier, Berit was sometimes overcome. Oh, yes, Paula declared, those fits of rage to which you were subjected were quite clearly connected to this. After all, it was you who had taken the place of her real son. Berit didn’t want to think like this, of course, she knew it was totally unreasonable, but part of her did so anyway, and it was this part that caused her to treat you the way she sometimes did. As a little boy you were completely mystified by these violent and always equally sudden outbursts, the screaming and the tongue-lashings that could be triggered by the smallest thing you had said or done, Paula says, but she hopes that what she is telling you here, through me, will help you to understand them a little better. At any rate, her treatment of you only served to make Berit feel even more guilty and bad about herself. She felt that she had not only failed her own natural son, she had also failed you.
Knowing all this obviously makes it easier to understand why Berit’s mood swings became more and more frequent and more and more extreme, why she tried to take her own life and, not least, why she eventually sought solace and forgiveness in religion. Although it wasn’t just solace and forgiveness she was looking for, Paula says, regarding this last point. It almost looked as though she had also chosen this new life as another form of penance. To start with she probably was seeking solace and forgiveness from God, but that she chose to marry Arvid, a man who was as different from her as he could possibly be and whom Paula is convinced she did not love, and that she not only accepted but also followed this man’s old-fashioned and unnecessarily strict Christian way of life – this, according to Paula, smacked of self-torture. And not only self-torture. In speaking of this she actually reiterates what she wrote in her diary many, many years ago: marrying Arvid the clergyman was another way of taking her own life, she says. The countless thou-shalts and shalt-nots that were part and parcel of her marriage and her new life as a Christian caused the old Berit to disappear. The old Berit felt she didn’t deserve to go on living, and being such an uncommonly strong and determined character she succeeded in erasing herself completely.
Having said all of this, there is one thing, however, that Paula cannot emphasize strongly enough, and that is how much Berit loved you. Because, while she may have missed and yearned for her real child and while she may have been almost drowning in guilt and self-loathing because she was not a part of his life, this did not mean that she loved you any less. You may think that when you read all this – when you read, for example, that Berit took her grief and frustration out on you for taking the other baby’s place – but actually it was the other way round. The fact that Berit missed her real son as much as she did simply shows how much she loved you. There was only one reason why she did not try to trace the other family and tell them what had happened and this was, of course, that she was afraid they would want you back. You were her whole life, David, and she couldn’t bear the thought of losing you, so instead she had to live with the pain of not having her own natural son.
And clearly it was this same fear that led her to react as she did when the question of your father’s identity came up. Not only did this remind her of all the guilt and anguish, but if she were to answer this question honestly and truthfully, you and everyone else would know that she was not your real mother – and then she might lose you.
But there is one thing that I find odd, not to say almost incomprehensible, and that is that Berit and Paula should have been such close friends as Paula claims. I mean, Paula had after all made a mistake which had caused you and Berit great and irreparable hurt, and even though Berit never did discover that switching you and the other baby had to some extent been a deliberate act, still, somehow it would have seemed more natural for her to hate Paula than to accept her friendship.
When I ask Paula about this she gets annoyed and quite indignant. It’s true that Berit had given her a wide berth for some time after she learned what had happened, Paula says. But eventually the need to talk to someone who knew had been too strong for her and this, together with the fact that she thought Paula had got the babies mixed up by mistake and was ridden with guilt over what she had done, helped her to overcome her anger and become her friend. Indeed as time went on that incident in the postnatal ward became more of a bond between them than a bone of contention, or so Paula maintains. They knew something that no one else knew and that no one else could ever know, and this formed the basis for a mutual sense of loyalty that was stronger than anyone could imagine, she says. They acted as each other’s confessor, you might say. Paula confided things to Berit that she has never confided to anyone else before or since, and Berit was equally frank and open with Paula.
It sounds logical enough as far as it goes, and yet I can’t help thinking that Paula is exaggerating and glamorizing their friendship a little. And possibly more than a little. For one thing it seems unlikely to me that anyone could find it in themselves to make a close friend and confidante of a person who had, after all, done them such great and irreparable harm, and for another I’m beginning to wonder why Paula gets so hot under the collar just because I ask how she and Berit could have been as close as she says. To be quite honest, the way she idealizes their friendship makes me think that Paula has something to hide and that she’s afraid that I and then you will discover what it is.
I’m not sure, but sometimes it occurs to me that she describes their relationship as she would like it to have been, not only when talking to me about it, but also in her diaries. She hasn’t allowed me to read everything in them, you see, far from it, but in those entries I have read, she keeps mentioning how close they were, how much they meant to one another and what wonderful times they had together. She lays it on so thick that I find it hard to swallow. I’m not sure why she does this; maybe it’s easier to live with the knowledge that she switched you and that other baby if she idealizes her relationship with your mother. This is pure speculation, of course, but perhaps her diary entries and this letter are both ways of forgiving herself. I mean, if Berit of all people could forgive her – yes and not only forgive her but go so far as to become what Paula calls her soulmate – then surely anyone could forgive her, even Paula herself, and maybe even you, David. Maybe this letter is her way of asking you for forgiveness too.
Anyway, when I ask Paula why she has chosen to break the promise she once made to Berit and tell you all this now, she doesn’t say a word about forgiveness. I feel pretty certain that this mattered a lot to her, but she says it was the news that you were only pretending to have lost your memory that made her change her mind. It made her realize how terribly important it was for you to learn your true origins, she says. And besides, she was starting to worry about what might happen if you were not told that it wasn’t only your father you should be looking for but your mother as well. You might disregard letters that you shouldn’t disregard and you might not disregard letters that you should disregard, and she couldn’t live with that.
And finally, the question that must occupy you more than any other: who were your mother and father? Paula doesn’t remember their surname, she says. All she knows is that they were living in Namsos when you were born and that your mother suffered from postnatal depression for a while afterwards. But it should be quite possible for you to trace the family yourself. As far as I can gather your parents’ names will be in the files at Namsos Hospital and, if for any reason they have gone missing from the files, well, there are only five possible alternatives and with your date of birth as reference all of these families ought to be easy to track down and to contact. In any case, Paula and I wish you good luck.